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British Literature and the Brontës
Dr Calum Gardner
Module Description:
This module will provide students with an introduction to nineteenth-century British literature
with a particular focus on well-known authors from the period, including the Brontës.
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë lived at Haworth Parsonage, only a few miles from
Leeds, and we will visit their home as part of this module. During the 1840s and 1850s, they
wrote some of the most original and challenging fiction of the Victorian period, works which
retain their popularity and still inspire criticism, fiction, and film and stage adaptations. Other
nineteenth-century authors including Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde, and
the Pre-Raphaelite poets may be included in the curriculum.
The School of English at the University of Leeds is one of the top-rated departments in the
country and ranks in the top 10 for research. Assessment for this module will be ongoing
and cumulative, and will help students build their skill and confidence in carrying out
research on nineteenth-century British literature. You will be expected to come to class
each day prepared to engage in group discussion about the assigned texts. Class
participation will be assessed and will be worth 10% of your total grade. You must also give
a presentation (which will be filmed) in the second week, and submit an annotated
bibliography and an introduction to an essay topic in the second week. The presentation will
be worth 40% and the written work will be worth 50% of the total grade.
Day 1: Introduction to Nineteenth-Century British Literature
We will begin with an introductory lecture, followed by a group discussion.
In preparation for this session, please read Martin Hewitt’s article on the notion of Victorian
Britain: Martin Hewitt, ‘Why the Notion of Victorian Britain Does Make Sense’, Victorian
Studies, 48 (2006), 395-438.
Some questions for consideration:
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What are our preconceptions of Victorian literature? What terms do we tend to
associate with the concept of Victorian Britain?
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What is the significance of our decision to use or not to use ‘Victorian’ to describe
this body of literature?
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Why do you think this module focuses specifically on British literature of the
nineteenth century, as opposed to literature from any other period?
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Why do modern readers return to these texts? What makes Victorian literature (for
example: Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, and Middlemarch) so popular and enduring? What
is at the heart of our modern-day fascination with Victorian literature and culture?
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Why do you think there have been so many film, television, and stage adaptations of
Victorian novels? Why do you think the genre of neo-Victorian fiction is so popular
today?
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What important changes took place during the nineteenth century? What changes
took place in the literary and publishing worlds during the nineteenth century?
Today, you will also be introduced to some of the remarkable items in the Brotherton
Library Special Collections, which include a wealth of material from and relating to the
nineteenth century. These include first editions of Charles Dickens’s serial publications and
170 autograph letters from the author, a collection of letters from the Tennyson family, a
substantial collection of manuscripts written by Algernon Charles Swinburne, and papers
relating to the Arnold family, Bram Stoker, and Aubrey Beardsley. Perhaps most importantly
for us, the Brotherton Collections also contain a substantial number of items relating to the
Brontë family, and to Branwell Brontë in particular. They include the little books written and
bound by Branwell during his youth, stories from Charlotte’s and Branwell’s shared fictional
world of Angria, Charlotte’s French exercise book from Brussels, and Anne’s commentary
on the Bible.
You will have the opportunity to view some of these items today, and you are encouraged
to return and explore this material on your own, and to make use of it in your annotated
bibliographies and presentations.
Suggested Contextual Reading:
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Richard Altick, The English Common Reader (1957)
Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, and Politics (1993)
Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987)
Dinah Birch, Our Victorian Education (2007)
Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830 –
1914 (1988)
Joseph Bristow, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry (2000)
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
English Middle Class, 1780 – 1850 (1987)
Philip Davis, The Oxford English Literary History: Volume 8, 1830 – 1880, The
Victorians (2002)
Simon Dentith, Society and Cultural Forms in Nineteenth-Century England (1998)
Josephine Guy, ed., The Victorian Age: An Anthology of Sources and Documents
(2001)
Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, eds., The Victorian Serial (1991)
Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, eds., The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural
History, c. 1880 – 1900 (2000)
Colin Matthew, ed., The Nineteenth Century, 1815 – 1901 (2000)
Francis O’Gorman, ed., A Concise Companion to the Victorian Novel (2005)
Herbert Tucker, ed., A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture (1999)
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780 – 1950 (1958)
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Day 2: Elizabeth Gaskell & Charles Dickens: Ghost Stories, Gothic Fiction and the
Victorian Periodical Press
Charles Dickens is one of the best known Victorian authors, and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote
The Life of Charlotte Brontё (1857), one of the most important biographies of the nineteenth
century. Both were authors of important social problem novels (these are novels that
engaged with the social problems of the nineteenth century, including the effects of
industrialization, poverty, and inequality between the sexes), and both wrote for the
periodical press. Dickens was the editor of the weekly periodical, Household Words, from
1850 – 1859, and after severing relations with his publishers, he started a similar periodical
called All the Year Round. After the success of Gaskell’s first novel, Mary Barton (1848),
Dickens invited her to write for Household Words. Although she agreed and eventually
contributed to both periodicals, the two authors shared an extremely strained relationship.
There will be a short lecture on Dickens and Gaskell, their working relationship, and
nineteenth-century periodical publishing. We will then have a group discussion about three
ghost stories: Gaskell’s ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ and Dickens’s ‘The Haunted House’ and
‘The Ghost in Master B’s Room’. They can be found in your module booklet. I’ve also
included Gaskell’s Gothic tale, ‘The Grey Woman’, in the module booklet – if you have time,
please read this as well.
Some questions for consideration:
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Can you detect similar themes in Gaskell’s stories? Can you detect similar themes in
Dickens’s stories? Are there any similarities that Dickens’s and Gaskell’s stories
share?
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Given that Gaskell and Dickens both wrote social problem novels, can you see any
indication of similar concerns in these stories?
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Why do you think Gothic stories and ghost stories were so popular in periodicals?
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‘The Grey Woman’ was published in three parts. Why do you think the story was
broken up in the way that it was?
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Describe the children in these tales. What is their significance?
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In what ways are gender and sexuality important in these tales?
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What rhetorical tools do both writers use and to what effects?
Suggested further reading:
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Peter Ackroyd, Dickens (1990)
John Bowen, Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit (2000)
John Carey, The Violent Effigy (1991)
Philip Collins, Dickens and Education (1963)
Holly Furneaux, Queer Dickens: Erotics, Families, Masculinities (2009)
Juliet John, Dickens and Mass Culture (2010)
Juliet John, Dickens’s Villains: Melodrama, Character, Popular Culture (2001)
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John O. Jordan, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens (2001)
Jill L. Matus, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell (2007)
Lyn Pykett, Charles Dickens (2002)
Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, eds., Victorian Gothic: Literary and Cultural
Manifestations in the Nineteenth Century (2000)
Hilary Margo Schor, Scheherezade in the Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell and the
Victorian Novel (1992)
Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, eds., The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings
and Soundings (1982)
Elton Smith and Robert Haas, The Haunted Mind: The Supernatural in Victorian
Literature (1999)
Patsy Stoneman, Elizabeth Gaskell (2006)
Jenny Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (1999)
J. Don Vann, ‘Dickens, Charles Lever and Mrs. Gaskell’, Victorian Periodicals
Review, 22 (1989), 64-71
Julian Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature
(2002)
Claire Wood, Dickens and the Business of Death (2015)
Day 3: Pre-Raphaelites and Poetry
We will have a discussion of the development and the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood (PRB), with an emphasis on the relationship between word and image. We will
then discuss poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning,
Algernon Charles Swinburne and others.
Some questions for consideration:
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What were the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood?
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How might we define their success or failure with regards to these aims?
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In what ways might we compare painterly strategies with poetic strategies?
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Is it significant that the PRB was an all male group? How would you describe their
relationships with their female associates (for example, Christina Rossetti and Lizzie
Siddal)?
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Is it useful to consider Swinburne and Browning in relation to the Pre-Raphaelites?
Today, we will visit the Leeds City Art Gallery, where you will see several Pre-Raphaelite
paintings.
Suggested further reading:
Tim Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (1999)
Andrew Belsey and Catherine Belsey, ‘Christina Rossetti: Sister to the Brotherhood’,
Textual Practice, 2:1 (1988), 30-50
Joseph Bristow, ed., Victorian Women Poets: Emily Brontё, Elizabeth Barrett
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Browning, Christina Rossetti (1995)
Alison Chapman, The Afterlife of Christina Rossetti (2000)
Deborah Cherry, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists (1993)
Colin Cruise, Pre-Raphaelite Drawing (2011)
Diane D’Amico, Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender and Time (1999)
Kate Flint, The Victorians and the Visual Imagination (2000)
Ellen Harding, ed., Re-framing the Pre-Raphaelites: Historical and Theoretical
Essays (1996)
Antony H. Harrison, Victorian Poets and Romantic Poems: Intertextuality and
Ideology (1990)
Jan Marsh, The Pre-Raphaelite Circle (2005)
Jerome McGann, Swinburne: An Experiment in Criticism (1972)
Lynne Pearce, Woman/Image/Text: Readings in Pre-Raphaelite Art and Literature
(1991)
Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (2000)
Dinah Roe, Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination: The Devotional Poetry and Prose
(2006)
Dinah Roe, The Rossettis in Wonderland: A Victorian Family History (2011)
Herbert Sussman, Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early
Victorian Literature and Art (1995)
Day 4: Oscar Wilde
Today, we will discuss Wilde’s popular 1895 comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest. In
preparation for this session, and in addition to reading the play, please familiarize yourself
with other works by Wilde. You might want to read one or more of Wilde’s other comedies:
An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, or Lady Windermere’s Fan. Please also
read through the supplementary material on Wilde for Day 4 in your module booklet.
Some questions for consideration:
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How fluid is morality in Wilde’s plays?
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What is the significance of the figure of the dandy, and what does that role bring to
the plays?
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How and why are Wilde’s plays comic?
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How does Wilde configure relationships between the sexes and between the
generations in his plays?
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What types of masculinity are evident in Wilde’s play?
Suggested further reading:
James Eli Adams, Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Manhood (1995)
Patricia F. Behrendt, Oscar Wilde: Eros and Aesthetics (1991)
Joseph Bristow, ‘Dowdies and Dandies: Oscar Wilde's Refashioning of Society
Comedy’, Modern Drama 37:1 (1994): 53-70.
Karl Beckson, ed., Oscar Wilde: the Critical Heritage (1970)
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Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (1987)
Sos Eltis, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde (1996)
Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Market place: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public
(1986)
Josephine Guy and Ian Small, Oscar Wilde’s Profession: Writing and the
Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century (2000)
Norbert Kohl, Oscar Wilde: The Works of a Conformist Rebel (1989)
Kerry Powell, Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s (1990)
Peter Raby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (1997)
Frederick S. Roden, ed., Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies (2005)
Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment
(1994)
John Stokes, Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles and Imitations (1996)
Day 5: Field trip to Haworth
Suggested further reading on the Brontës:
Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel
(1987)
Juliet Barker, The Brontës (1994)
Rachel K. Carnell, ‘Feminism and the Public Sphere in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall’, Novel, 30 (1996), 32-55
Christina Colby, The Ends of History: Victorians and the ‘Woman Question’ (1991)
Stevie Davies, Emily Bronte: The Artist as a Free Woman (1983)
Terry Eagleton, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës (1975, 2nd ed 1988)
Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857)
Janet Gezari, Last Things: Emily Brontë’s Poems (2008)
Heather Glen, ed., Cambridge Companion to the Brontës (2006)
John Maynard, Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality (1984)
Elsie Michie, “From Simianized Irish to Oriental Despots: Heathcliff, Rochester, and
Racial Difference.” Novel, 25 (1992), 125-40
Julia Miele Rodas, ‘“On the Spectrum”: Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre’,
Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 4 (2008),
Lucasta Miller, The Brontë Myth (2001)
Julie Nash and Barbara A. Suess, eds., New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne
Brontë (2001)
Lorri Nandrea, ‘Desiring Difference: Sympathy and Sensibility in Jane Eyre’, in
Novel: a forum on fiction 37 (2003), 112-134
M. Jeanne Peterson, ‘The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and
and Society’, in Martha Vicinus, ed., Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age
(1972)
Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in MidVictorian England (1989). Chapters 1 & 5 on the Brontёs
Sally Shuttleworth, Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology (1996)
Marianne Thormälen, The Brontës and Religion (1999)
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Day 6: The Brontës
We will begin with a short lecture on the Brontës, their lives, literature, and cultural legacy,
before moving on to focus on Charlotte’s Jane Eyre. We will have a group discussion about
Jane Eyre and about popular perceptions of the Brontës. We may also read extracts from
Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë. In addition to reading the novel, please
identify one or more passages that depict acts of reading (this can be a moment during
which a character reads a book, or it can be a moment during which a character performs
another kind of reading, such as reading someone’s character or face).
Some questions for consideration:
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Who were the Brontës? How do we differentiate them? What myths have grown up
around them?
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How does CB take us inside Jane Eyre’s childhood consciousness?
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Why and how is Jane different from other children? Why might CB want to construct
such a character?
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What might psychoanalytic or biographical approaches bring to the text? What are
their limitations?
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How does our reading of feminist or post-colonial criticism impact on our
understanding of Jane Eyre?
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What role does religion play in the text?
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Why is education an important theme in the novel?
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What is troubling about the relationship between Rochester and Jane?
Day 7: Jane Eyre
We will view an adaptation of Jane Eyre, and this will be followed by a discussion of this
particular adaptation and the adaptation of other nineteenth-century texts.
Day 8: Jane Eyre: Presentations
We will have individual presentations, followed by discussion.
Day 9: Brontë Controversy
Jane Eyre was wildly successful, but it was also an extremely controversial text. It was
followed by the publication of Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey. The
appearance of these three novels (which dealt with violence, bigamy, and alcoholism,
subjects that were considered shocking to Victorian audiences) written by authors who
shared the same surname (the pseudonym Bell), resulted in heated debates about the
morality of the texts, the identities (and especially the gender) of the authors, and whether
the authors were related. One of the most controversial aspects of Jane Eyre was the
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section on Lowood, which was partly based on Charlotte’s experiences at the Clergy
Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge. We will perform close readings of this section of the
novel, of Elizabeth Gaskell’s treatment of Charlotte’s school days at Cowan Bridge, and of a
vindication of the school (just one of the many important nineteenth-century documents in
the Brotherton Special Collections). We will discuss some of the early reviews of the
Brontës’ novels and consider the controversy engendered by Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte
Brontё.